communitas et caritas

The great church season of Advent has arrived.  It always makes me happy.  I've prepared a meager little Advent "wreath" in my prayer corner with stuff I found around the house.  I think I need to find a few more things, but the light is most important, and that has been established! Advent is one of the most wonderful seasons in our church. The expectant waiting, hope, joy, preparations--all are pregnant with God's love for us, just as we celebrate Mary's pregnancy, bringing the Christ Child into the world. I've been thinking about how I will teach Advent this week, to both eighth and tenth graders.  Such fun!  I found a book that reflects on Advent and Christmas music, and I think I will be using that.  (It's called O Come Emmanuel: A Musical Tour of Daily Readings for Advent and Christmas by Gordon Giles.)  It gives me a reason to listen to Advent music a bit today.  What I really want my students to begin to see is the myster...

I finally saw the film Of Gods and Men this morning, and I think it will stick with me for a while.  If you haven't seen it, you should!  It is incredibly beautiful.  (And with that warning, I'm going to reveal a bit of the ending--though it's something I was glad I knew before I watched it.) The film tells the true story of a Trappist monastery in the 1990s in Algeria.  The small group of French Trappists, who had been in this little village for over a century, was targeted by a group of terrorists during the civil war, and eventually killed.  The story is not about their death, but about their life with God, their love, and their commitment to each other and the surrounding community. Several touching scenes show how the monks respect and care for each other, though I don't really want to give away too many details here for those who haven't seen it.  There is, however, a sense of the deep compassion they possess for one another, and the acknowledg...

I've just been reading Ruth Burrows, The Essence of Prayer , and I've been thinking about this quote (p. 169):   "To expose ourselves generously to the demands of community life; to refuse to shirk them in any way is to expose ourselves to God, allowing Him to purify us through others, shatter our illusions with humbling self-knowledge, divest us of everything selfish and enable us to love others with a pure, mature, disinterested love.  Surely this is true for whoever would follow Our Lord closely, whatever their form of life." How true is that?!  I've been struggling with community living a bit lately--in part because I'm spending a lot more time at home, recovering (still!) from surgery.  So I think I need to make this quote my mantra for a while. Burrows writes in the context of a Carmelite monastery, where most enter expecting solitude, but where there is also structured and required community time.  Time with others that cannot be missed. ...

Today we celebrate the feast of our foundress--Saint Madeleine Sophie Barat!  Happy Feast! I'm stuck on the first rite of the mass (the introductory verse that we usually skip): "Set me like a seal on your heart, like a seal on your arm, for love is strong as death ."   (Cant. 8:6) Love is strong as death.  Over the past several months, I've been pondering how love can conquer our fears, that my fears are eased when I remember the love of Jesus.  What do I have to be afraid of when I am filled with God's love--a love that is far stronger than all else! And yet, I do have fears. We all do.  Fears of failure, of disappointment, of loss, and of death, to name a few.  One of the most beautiful things about the Society of the Sacred Heart for me is the element of love.  Sophie founded a community of women who are devoted to sharing God's love with all they meet.  Women who help every person they encounter to know that they are loved.  I...

The last two weeks have been challenging to say the least.  About two weeks ago, I had to have emergency surgery to remove my appendix.  Pretty common, I know, but still, surgery is scary!  I'm never really sick, and I'd never been to surgery or even admitted to the hospital before. I was scared, to say the least.  But I was also in pain and sick, and so I could ignore the fear in order to just let the surgeon do his work. Somehow the hospital didn't get a record that I was Roman Catholic, and so no chaplains visited me, until a few days later when they visited the other person in my room. Fr. Jim brought her communion, then asked me who I was and offered me the Sacrament of the Sick and Eucharist. He anointed me, said the words, and I burst into tears, my first since the surgery.  I was so immediately relieved, and also suddenly aware of how frightened I had been for days.  I felt God's presence with me, the warmth and love flooding over me with the ...